Wednesday, February 27, 2013

As part of our new health revamp at the Row, we're eating tons of this stuff. It's one of our favorite
quick meals. I
keep the sauce in a honey bear container in the fridge (and add it to other
things, as well). This recipe makes enough for two people to eat for a couple of days
or more.

(Note: If I’m using brown
rice, I put a lid on the pot, put the pot over high heat, and add remaining
ingredients once steam is coming out around lid. If I’m using white rice, I add
all other ingredients first, then start the cooking.)

(2)chopped
broccoli or other veggies (I only had red pepper to add to the batch pictured here)

(3)snow
peas & green onions

(4)a
big, thick layer of bean sprouts on top (I MUCH prefer soybean sprouts, but they’re
hard to find and can't be had in our Little Town at all, so I often use mung bean sprouts)

Put
lid on (I usually have such a mound by now that getting the lid on is a trick),
and put pot over high heat. When steam begins escaping around lid, turn heat
down to low and simmer until all liquid is absorbed. Dish up, sprinkle with just a
LITTLE sauce (it’s HOT), serve with cold kimchee on the side, and eat while watching Finding Bigfoot. Mmmm!

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

A
psychic once told me that I starved to death in a past life in 1000 BCE China.
So that’s gotta be the root of my obsession with food, right? Anyhoo, in the
aftermath of our collective health scares, we’re going all OCD on our eating
habits. The new plan: eat less meat and more fish; up the daily fiber; buy as
much local and organic food as possible; eat low glycemic index/load foods;
reduce fat & salt; and eliminate processed foods. In America, and maybe
especially in the farm-belt state of South Dakota, this is like going back to
hunter-gather mode—in the Sahara. We may eventually resort to a diet of only free-range
peacock, rocks, and filtered water, though I’m highly suspicious of filtered
water…

Jada's post-hedgehog-attack nap

In
the past week’s effort to get on a better dietary path, we’ve been to four
regular grocers, a health food store, and three Asian markets. Our fridge is
jammed full of organic produce, cooked black eyed peas (that I now put in
everything), a new batch of quinoa/bulgher tabhouli (with black eyed peas), and
unhomogenized organic Iowa milk. The freezer’s stocked with wild-caught salmon
and tuna, and free-range, grass-fed, local organic chicken, lamb, and venison (though
the venison might be corn-fed, too). We’re scouring labels for any sign of
corn-based products, which we’re also trying to eliminate (check here for the
staggering list: http://www.livecornfree.com/2010/04/ingredients-derived-from-corn-what-to.html).
And I’m now on a subscription plan to get 5 lbs. of Café Altura
water-processed, organic Italian roast decaf beans delivered to my door every
two months.

Canine cuisine: Basics food with yam & snow peas

In
addition to our own burgeoning foodiness, we’re switching our two dogs and our
cat to an entirely grain-free diet. We raised our Aussie, Jada, for her first
two years on the BARF diet, because I believed in the idea of feeding her as
close to a wild dog’s natural diet as possible (http://www.barfworld.com/html/learn_more/evolutionary.shtml).
But I eventually got tired of grinding up 40-lb. boxes of bone-in chicken backs
with greens and veggies, so we switched to New Balance kibble, high-quality
stuff with no by-products or preservatives. It was way more convenient for memememe. Then recently, I came across a
photo of Jada back in her BARF days. I was shocked to see her gorgeous silky coat
and clear, bright eyes. Now, she sheds by the handful, she’s arthritic, and she
struggles constantly with overweight and allergies. Since our furry buddies are
mostly in the house and don’t hunt to survive, they have ONLY us to depend on
for her food, so…

Yogi: Is he smiling? Yes, I think he is.

We
switched all our furry friends to Blue’s “Basics Grain Free” foods: Basics
kibble “dressed” with a little Basics canned. In addition, they get table
scraps, but only raw (Jada loves tomatoes, Yogi loves sweet potatoes, and they
both adore snow peas), and no grains. The dogs love the change. Rickie Lee, resident feline, is more stubborn and will carefully nibble around each Basics
morsel to get to her old Purina standby (we’re acclimating her with ½ and ½ for
a while), but we have hope. We figure it will take a month before we know if
the change is making a positive difference, but so far, no dog breath, and
that’s a good thing, since we sleep “pack” style on a frameless king-sized bed (So 13-year-old Jada has easy access). And yes, it’s no longer exaggeration—considering price-per-pound,
our furry friends ARE now eating better than we are. The Blue rep pointed out
the irony (without realizing it) of healthier foods when she said that the
Basics diet was more expensive because “they had to take a lot of stuff out.”

Rickie Lee: Serve me. Serve me now.

I’d
love to think our bodies can process whatever abuse we hurl at them. I’d love
to think the adage is true that’s it’s not as important what goes IN our mouths
as what comes OUT. I’d love to think our bodies will crave only what they need
for balance & good health. Or, I’d love to think that in the crapshoot
theory of the Universe, it doesn’t matter WHAT we eat. And we will, no doubt,
fall off the holistic wagon often (who’s gonna eat those Sixlets and chocolate
oranges in the freezer?). But tonight, we’ll dine on tofu-falafel burgers and
steamed fresh Brussels sprouts. And we’ll stop feeding the peaflock corn, just
in case. And if nothing else fights off the fluffy, pasty, midlife Pillsbury
Doughboy bodies we’ve been cultivating until now, we have acres of organic hardwood
trees, and our teeth are still good…

Saturday, February 16, 2013

I have not been a tiny little thing since I had my first child a few decades ago. But I tell ya, this
dang BS is trying to turn me into Rotunda, the Humorless Wonda.

I
am the object of the Universe’s hilarious health hijinks, almost cartoon-like
in their wicked irony. I’ve gained at least the weight of a beefy newborn or two
since my stroke a mere four months ago. I want to slap my doc every time she
says, “eat less, exercise more…try for an hour a day.” She and I both know this
is a catch 22 and that her pat answer is just something to shut up my whining.
She and I both know this is how the Universe is playing it:

So,
it seems I was maintaining my sveldt silhouette by keeping myself perpetually stressed
out and hopped up on stimulants. But isn’t this extra weight putting a strain
on my heart? But if I stop the beta blocker to kick-start my metabolism again,
won’t my heart rate (and possibly BP) go up? But if I stop the SSRI so I can
get back to my pre-stroke stressed out non-eating, will I go back to loud,
annoying sobbing in the hardware store? and will the freaked-out stares of
hardware shoppers raise my anxiety level and, hence, my heart rate and BP? I
have a pack of American Spirit cigs in my freezer (for nostalgic
smell-a-thons)…should I start smoking again to boost my metabolism? Should I
just go back to my pre-stroke breakfast of a bottomless pot of spoon-corroding,
high-test Italian roast and a couple of coffin-nails? But couldn’t that lead to
another stroke?

Lather.
Rinse. Repeat. You get the picture. There’s no good way out of this mess. I refuse
to sacrifice my summer vacation for a week at Fat Camp. So for now at least,
I’m eating mouse-sized portions of brown rice and steamed veggies. I’m thinking
up affectionate nicknames for the hand weights and recumbent bikes at the gym. I'm avoiding anything that might be (a) delicious; (b) comforting, or (c) fun. I’m cultivating a Johnny Cash (the late years) je ne sais quoi: black moo-moo, black
stretch pants, black industrial steel-toed boots, black bandido poncho. And if
teaching doesn’t pan out, I think poetic psychic medium has possibilities,
because this old poem of mine was surely prophetic…

Saturday, February 9, 2013

It’s been three months since this
stupid BS (my affectionate nickname for the stroke I had back in October). And
now that I’ve been back at work for a little over a month, I’m ready to admit
to the nagging daily interference of BS. I’m not saying who, but some people might have had an inflated
sense of their own superhumanness, and some
people might have needed more than 10 weeks’ recovery time after a stroke
before jumping back into the fray…

Ongoing Challenge #1: Balance. I’m
always just slightly dizzy (either
from the stroke or all the new BP meds, I’m not sure which). Not long after
classes began, I realized that while I’d been home on leave, if I felt especially
off-balance, I sat down or took to my bed. But standing in front of 24
students, if the room starts wavering, I have to muster extraordinary
concentration and nonchalantly inch my way—while simultaneously explaining the advantage
of an unreliable narrator in a feminist reading of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s
“The Yellow Wallpaper”—to a desk, a chair, the whiteboard, or anything I can
hold onto.

It only occasionally feels like a T-Rex ate my brain.

Challenge #2: Coordination. At
home, I keep a clear path, since my left side still doesn’t always
know exactly where it is in space.My
left arm & leg sometimes overshoot or undershoot their mark. Ray and I are
used to the fact that I will occasionally side-swipe, knock down, catch on, or
slam into things. Ray tries not to startle when I suddenly grab for a railing, a
wall, or his hair in order to steady myself. But if you’re a daydreaming student, it can be alarming when your teacher sends notebooks and
handouts flying across the room with an accidental fling of her wacky left arm.

Challenge #3: Fatigue. At home, my
rule since the stroke has been, if I’m tired, I sleep. But I can’t really pull
that off at school. And the more tired I get, the clumsier and achier I get. I
find myself in my office hours, stabbing at the keyboard as I type things like “Please
make sure you drift fodders contin the dfellowin: 0#b8. Tink you.” Sometimes
those two hours in class are so exhausting that I go home after classes, take a
nap, wake up for dinner, take another nap, and wake up to go to bed.

Challenge #4: Muscles. Back in the
hospital, when the neurologist said, “Your left side is affected,” I don’t
think I realized just how much stuff I
have on my left side. On especially wonderful days, I get up in the morning
feeling like if I only had a cape (maybe teal laméwith silver
sequins), I could save every gadget-head, non-reading, apathetic late teen soul
in the universe. But by evening, I feel like someone has strapped a giant
Slendertone belt around my middle, set on “constant punishing contraction.” My
stomach muscles hurt from breathing and holding myself upright, my right hip throbs
from compensating for my clunky left leg, my eyes ache from trying to focus together,
I’m hoarse, my throat is sore, and my left hand wants to curl into a little
ball. In one short day, I can go from Wonder Woman to Kwasimoto.

Challenge #5: Brain. This is the hardest one to admit
to. I’ve always liked and appreciated my chatty, over-analytical brain. So I
really struggle some days with the fact that right now at least, my brain is
not the same. It’s hard to describe—I wouldn’t call it “damage” exactly; I
can’t say I’ve lost one iota of my cognitive function, though my memory is a tad
spongier than before. And other things are certainly different in there. Some things I used to think (obsess?)
about—Yeats’ poem “Vacillations;” writing a cycle of poems that re-imagines the
“stations of the cross” in terms of mundane daily activities; writing a
book-length collection of prose poems about a modern-day Joan of Arc;
working out a “stuck” chapter in the novel I’m writing about an alternative
healer who stalks Dean Stockwell—I don’t seem the least bit interested in
anymore. And my vocabulary wasn’t affected, but the timing of word recall was—it takes me a split-second longer to dig
through the brain files (or travel the new neural pathways?) for a word I want,
so I tend to pause, stutter, and uh-uh-uh-uh more than before BS. And in spite
of my new friend and savior, the SSRI (clinical depression--as opposed to the frequent and perfectly normal WTF-happened?-ohhellno! post-stroke response--is quite common after a
stroke), my “new” brain sometimes switches on an emotional shit-storm (beg
pardon) that reduces me to a steaming pile of blubbering mush because I didn’t
get a pony when I was 12, or because my black shoes need polishing, or because
Ray left an orange on the counter.

Lest you think BS turned me into a
big whiny baby, you should know that I’m constantly, completely grateful to be
in the shape I’m in—I shared the stroke ward with folks who showed me just how lucky
I am. I get that. So, as my mother says, “Head down, plow forward.” And thankfully,
one thing hasn’t changed: I still love a good challenge.